by Maaja Wentz
The bus stopped hard, sending a wave of pain through her head. The driver opened the door to pick up commuters and as they filed past her, Tonya caught a whiff of coffee and hash browns. Her stomach raged with hunger but that could be normal. By this time of day, she should have eaten breakfast. Maybe she wasn’t one of the infected, just hungry. What she wouldn’t give for a stack of her Mom’s pancakes right now. She sighed. A lump rose in her throat.
Her phone pinged. It was a text from Aunt Helen:
Only trust family. Leave town. NOW. Love, Aunt Helen
Tonya tried to call back, but her rings went unanswered. She texted Aunt Helen:
Where are you? Where are my parents? I can’t contact them. I need your help. But be careful. Somebody killed my professor then raised him from the dead.
She waited, staring at the screen but there was no answer. Aunt Helen just sent her a message so why didn’t she reply? The bus lumbered on, but it would turn soon, leaving Tonya to walk the rest of the trip to campus. She rang for her stop and made her way to the back door.
No sooner had she stepped out and started walking when she heard limping steps behind her. When she sped up, she heard them keep pace. Tonya walked as fast as she could without running, but her pursuer was gaining. Despite her dizziness, she ran a block before she risked a peek back.
He was an old guy in a leather coat, almost on top of her! She needed a bike, a car, a rocket, to lose him.
Tonya kept running, searching for a house with an unfenced yard she could cut through. Loon Lake City was surrounded by farms and forest. One minute you were on a residential street near the north end of town, the next you cut north and found yourself toiling through a field of corn stalks.
She ran to the center and then took a sharp turn, gambling that her pursuer would not guess which way she went.
Out of breath, she emerged from the cornfield onto a familiar country road, hoping to flag down a ride. If a car didn’t come soon, the white-haired man would figure out where she went and catch her. She eyed the top of the hill eagerly, willing any kind of vehicle to appear. She stepped into the road, ready to stop whatever came from either direction.
She didn’t have long to wait. An ancient station wagon with fake wooden panels drove over the rise and slowed down. The sun-burned driver opened the passenger side door, releasing a chorus of slide guitars.
“What’s wrong, Miss? You can’t stand in the middle of the road.” He wore a sweat-stained John Deere hat.
“It’s an emergency. Are you going near campus?”
“Yup. Get in.”
His face looked familiar. Tonya and her family attended the Cattlemen’s Ball and similar fundraisers, but she didn’t know many farmers by name. With luck, he wouldn’t recognize her either. Tonya climbed in.
“Hope you don’t mind sharing,” he said, by which he meant his slobbery hound would sit across her lap and lean its head out the window.
“I’m just grateful for the lift.” After watching the dog’s long ears and tongue cast around in the wind for a while, she decided she liked this guy and his dog. They were a real pair. There was even a framed picture of the dog glued to the dashboard.
“What’s his name?” She stroked his back.
“Fido.”
“You’re joking.”
“Yeah.”
Tonya was about to ask whether “yeah,” meant he was kidding, when the dog pulled his head back into the car and gave Tonya a long, searching look before it opened its mouth, showing her every detail of its teeth and tonsils. She shivered.
Tonya had never been fond of toothy dogs. Too many owners let them roam free and it was always the bitey ones that ran after your bike. As a kid, she had been terrorized more than once by farmers’ German Shepherds, keen to sink their teeth into her pedaling legs. At least, that’s how it felt when she was a kid. It was kind of pathetic.
I know.
It took Tonya a moment to register that the driver’s lips hadn’t moved. He had answered with a voice in her head! Tonya shoved the dog aside, opened the door, and jumped out of the moving car, rolling into the ditch with none of the grace of an action hero. Maybe that was because of all the rocks she hit as she somersaulted along the ground. By the time she crashed to a stop, she was bruised like a banana and when she put her hand to her mouth, it came away bloody.
Struggling to her feet, she stood, teetering, as the car backed up to her. The door was still open, the hound fixing her with a steady stare. It wasn’t a big dog, but when it leaped out of the car she screamed like a little girl and took off across the field as if pursued by wolves.
Tree. Tree. Climb a tree, she thought. Except she was in the middle of a corn field with nothing but stalks to slow her down and trip her.
The wicked thing caught her, growling and sinking its teeth into the cuff of her jeans. Tonya tried to shake free, but it wouldn’t let go. What she wouldn’t do to have some of her aunt’s extra-persuasive talents right now. She was always good with animals.
She turned to face the beast. “Calm down Buddy. You don’t want to hurt me, do you?”
The dog growled louder.
“That’s it! I refuse to be intimidated by a mutt who, five minutes ago, was sitting on my lap with his floppy ears out the window.” She circled her hands mysteriously and looked him in the eyes. “I am your new master,” she intoned in her best lion taming voice. “Let go my pant leg.”
“You gotta be kidding.” The white-haired man emerged through the corn stalks. “You are the niece of the dreaded Witch of Loon Lake?”
How did he know her? And where had he come from? No one could have predicted she would jump out of the car into this cornfield. She continued to croon and move her hands mysteriously which seemed to calm the dog. At last, it released her leg and sat back on its haunches.
“Alright, fun’s over. You’re coming with me,” said the man.
“You’re welcome to him. What a strange dog.”
“Don’t try to be funny.” He raised an eyebrow and held out his hand. Levitating above it appeared a tiny flaming orb, so bright it hurt to look at. “You must be wondering where your aunt has gone. Get in the car and we’ll take you to her.”
“Is Aunt Helen okay?” She didn’t want to go anywhere with him. Nothing she had seen in her life prepared her for a man who could harness a ball of fire, and the telepathic farmer creeped her out. “Did you kill my professor?”
“Let’s go.” He talked like a man who had a gun on her, but he didn’t. Over distance, she could outrun this limping old man.
“Make me.”
Suddenly, the fireball levitated ten feet over his head, expanding to the size of a tennis ball. “Shall I burn up the cornfield along with you? How about the farmer’s house with his family inside?” The man attempted a smile, which failed to turn up the corners of his mouth. It only sank his wrinkles deeper as his Grinch mouth stretched wide.
To think she’d been afraid of a dog bite a few minutes ago. For the first time in her life, Tonya wondered what her parents would do if she predeceased them.
FOOD FIGHT
Sun streaming into his dorm room awoke Drake. He sat up, shut the blinds, and lay back down. Halloween was over and, despite Tonya’s dire warnings, he had survived. Too bad Priya’s triumph had been spoiled by a bomb scare.
After they were ejected from the cemetery, the party had moved into a field just beyond campus where carousing had ensued until the cops dispersed them for trespassing.
“Are you up, Zain?” There was a lump in his roommate’s bed, but that didn’t guarantee anything. The guy was such a slob that Drake regularly spied lost props and camera equipment poking out of the bedding.
A quick check of the clock explained Zain’s absence. It was 11:00 a.m. and Zain, unlike Drake, was a morning person. It was a good thing he was such a good sound editor, otherwise Drake might not forgive his cheerfulness about attending 8:00 a.m. lectures. By 11:00 on a Sunday, he could be anywhere.
Drake would rather go back to bed, but Zain’s message sounded urgent. He threw on jeans and a t-shirt and went to the elevator, promising himself coffee. Oh, celestial elixir! The magical brew would open his eyes and restore his wits for whatever Zain was talking about.
THE SCENE IN THE CAFETERIA was beyond anything Drake had imagined in his wildest movie scenarios. Troupes of students brandished trays at the cafeteria ladies, who defended the food with ladles and long-handled pots. Young men and women were shrieking and stealing bananas, leaping up and down in triumph like it was Planet of the Apes.
A handful of campus police clustered together, but instead of stopping the thieves, they stuck their hands into heating trays and pulled out handfuls of bacon. The eating wasn’t split exactly along student/employee lines. In some instances, cafeteria staff gorged themselves on sausages, while students walked out in open-mouthed disgust.
Drake pulled out his NEX-VG30H. He had to capture this carnage and stream it live, now!
Zain stood on a table, panning with his camera and tripod.
Drake yelled up to him, “It’s the Super Bowl of food fights!”
“It’s no food fight Duck, it’s destiny. Cue the suspenseful music. Here comes the trailer.” He put on a horror narrator voice: “In a world gone topsy-turvy, it’s a showdown between the hungry, and the voracious. Cafeteria!”
Drake would have found it funnier if the fighting weren’t so intense. Zain was standing back and recording while staff broke wooden spoons over students’ heads. Shouldn’t somebody break up the fight?
A skirmish between servers in hair nets and students waving plastic trays drew his attention when a muscle-bound guy stepped up waving a baseball bat. This looked bad, and the authorities were too busy stuffing their faces to notice.
“Hey!” said Drake, “Put the bat down!”
The guy’s shoulders were so broad he’d be tall sideways. He stepped up to the cafeteria ladies and swung the bat like a gorilla. The cafeteria ladies stood between him and the bananas.
“Outta my way,” said Gorilla Guy.
“Please. Talk this out. Tell the ladies what you want.” Drake held his palms up in the universal sign for please Gorilla Guy, don’t split my skull with that baseball bat.
“I want the food, all the food.” Gorilla Guy smacked the bat into his hand and stepped up to Drake, squaring his impossibly broad shoulders.
“No, it’s mine!” shrieked one cafeteria lady, launching a flying tackle at Gorilla Guy and knocking his legs from under him. A moment later, she was sitting astraddle him with the bat raised over her head, smirking. “Who’s calling the shots now, you snotty rich kid! I’m sick of you, all of you!”
A handful of servers converged on Gorilla Guy to hold him down. They chanted “Hit the rich kid! Hit the rich kid!”
“Whoa, whoa,” Drake said to her. “Think what you’re doing. He looks like a killer but he’s somebody’s child. You can’t just bash his brains in.”
Drake stepped close and tried to get at the bat, but she took a swipe at him. Her prey tried to sit up and throw her off, but she laid the bat across his throat and pushed down with all her weight until he couldn’t breathe.
“Stay still. All the food is mine!”
Gorilla Guy stopped struggling. She raised the bat up, ready to deliver the death blow. Her eyes were frosted blue.
The student lay there, eyes wide, hyperventilating.
“Do you have children?” Drake asked.
She blinked, and the frost cleared from her eyes. She looked around as if noticing the bizarre scene for the first time. Her mouth fell slack. She looked at the student beneath her and startled, then leaped off, coming toward Drake, bat in hand.
“You’re up next.” She handed him the bat and strode off, tossing her hairnet to the floor. “I quit!”
She ran out the emergency exit and Drake watched her flee past the statue of Sir William Mackenzie and out of the courtyard.
Opening the door had set off an alarm. Over the racket, nobody could hear what anyone shouted. With no chance of arguing for peace, Drake looked around for hotspots where he should intervene.
Zain never stopped filming, even as students threw themselves on the edibles from all sides and cafeteria ladies tried to beat them back with wooden spoons. The students outnumbered staff, so why were the servers risking injury to defend the university’s food? The answer came when he saw them gorging themselves as well. That is, the ones who seemed crazed, with frosted eyes like Professor Rudolph.
Drake noticed a clear-eyed server taking advantage of the chaos by scooping cash from the till. Most of the campus police were too busy stuffing their faces to uphold the law but Drake found one lucid officer and pointed the server out.
The first bagel flew over the officer’s head while he was crossing the floor, phone to his ear as he reported the situation. A second bagel hit him full in the face.
The cafeteria erupted into a blitzkrieg of flying dishes and utensils as students fought their way to the hot tables. The serving staff, like medieval defenders under siege, used long-handled spoons to catapult showers of hot oatmeal, scrambled eggs, and fried tomatoes at their enemies. This tactic, intended to repel students, instead attracted them. Platoons of students laid down their arms and started lapping porridge off the floor like puppies.
A pair of girls started to fight over the last bagel on the floor. The brunette yanked the blonde by her arm and spun her to the ground. Drake stepped in and snatched the brunette’s bagel right out of her mouth. He tossed it away to end the fight, but similar skirmishes erupted all around. Kids were kicking, shoving, punching, and biting each other over the dregs of food.
Six police officers rushed in with Tasers, starting a stampede out the emergency exit.
“Zain! Zain! Get out before you get trampled!”
He could shout all he wanted but there was no way Zain could hear him over the alarm and the crazed mob. The unrelenting noise was making Drake’s head throb, on top of the caffeine withdrawal. He needed coffee!
Between the din and the lack of morning caffeine, Drake’s headache was an icepick to the temple. Knowing he shouldn’t, but too tempted by the scent of java in the air, he made his way gingerly into the fray. What an addict. All he could think of was that first sip.
He advanced toward the hot drinks, but didn’t like the frosty-eyed looks the servers were giving him. Especially that blonde hefting a big ladle. She shook it at him, guessing his desire.
Behind her, in a steamy row, awaited the coffee carafes. He had lost all desire for food. Who wouldn’t, after watching students gulp it off the floor doggy style? What he desperately needed was to grab an extra-large java.
“Easy there. I just want a coffee,” he told the blonde. He reached into his pocket, making no sudden moves, and pulled out a meal plan card. “I’ll pay for it. See?”
She didn’t look impressed but lowered her ladle a bit. “The coffee is mine.”
“Let’s do this nice and slow. Want to take my card?” He extended it, a peace offering amidst the melee.
She paused, and they locked eyes, gazes unwavering as laser beams as she pivoted 180 degrees around him with her ladle raised, looking for an opening. Now Drake stood with the coffee carafes behind him, she with her back to the cash register.
“I’m just going to take one cup.” He took a step backwards. She didn’t move so he turned around and filled a large cup.
The back of his head exploded with pain. He staggered around to face his attacker.
“Nice try.” Her ladle was slightly dented where it had connected with his head.
“What was that for? I was paying for it.”
“Sure kid, except this card is out of credits.” She held it up like a trophy. “Put down the coffee or taste my ladle again!”
That did it. Drake picked up fistfuls of sugar cubes and pelted them a
t her. She held her hands up to fend them off. He snapped a lid on his coffee and ran.
WHAT IS FOREVER?
His belly aching from so many pancakes, Roberto pulled up to the cemetery and parked.
“Come, Querida.” Roberto opened the passenger door for Lynette. She looked up at him, her eyes unfocused, her face slack.
“I want to stay here. You go.”
“Just let me kiss you then.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. She tried to protest but he undid her seat belt, picked her up, and started carrying her across the field. There was a break in the fence big enough to lift her through.
“Where are we going?”
“Shhh. I’ve got you.” He kept walking, being careful not to catch her dangling arms and legs on bushes as he went. He stopped at the foot of the Ash.
“We can lie here together.”
Reverently, he set her body onto its ancient roots. She looked up at him through lidded eyes.
Well done, said a voice inside Roberto’s head. Now lie down beside her so we may all be united.
Roberto did as he was told, cuddling up to Lynette and nuzzling her neck. Later, they would merge into the cold Entity, but for now why not enjoy her warmth?
She had been wrong to rescue him yesterday, but he didn’t blame her. Even he had screamed and cried for help at first, but after the breaking of ribs and passing out he had eventually felt no pain. The voices in his head were not grieving or angry. They were a chorus, welcoming him to join something larger.
It reminded him of being a small boy inside the Cathedral of Lima, awestruck by the sheer height of the vaulted roof, the beauty of walls and carvings glowing with gold. To be one with something mighty, to be part of a community on Earth and beyond; such things had once inspired him. Joining the Entity reminded him of that childlike exhilaration, but this new being linked him to minds he had never met. Its commands were absolute. It was intoxicating, but it also trapped Roberto between life and death, for as long as the Entity wished to hold him there.
